1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a communication supporting apparatus, a communication support method, and a computer program product for supporting communication by performing translation between a plurality of languages.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, there have been developed automatic translation apparatuses for mechanically translating an arbitrary input sentence due to the development of a natural language processing technology. Apparatuses for translating a sentence described in, for example, Japanese into other language such as English and the like have become commercially practical.
Further, example sentence utilization type translation apparatuses have also become commercially practical which enable speakers to communicate with each other promptly by causing them to select an appropriate sentence from previously prepared example sentences used in ordinary speech or by searching an example sentence similar to speech input by a user and presenting a translated sentence corresponding the example sentence.
As, for example, a foreign language speech supporting apparatus, translation apparatuses such as an electronic dictionary and the like become commercially practical that present paginal translation between a sentence spoken by a user using a native language and a sentence of a target language. Further, there is proposed an automatic translation apparatus (for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open (JP-A) No. 2003-30187) which enables a user to simply select a candidate of speech reflecting the preference and the attribution of the user by storing the history of the contents of speech executed in a study of speech.
In contrast, as a speech processing technology develops, there are practically put into market a speech synthesis system, which converts a character train of a natural language existing as electronic data into a speech output, and a speech input system, which can input a character train of a natural language by causing a user to input a spoken speech and converting the input speech into the character train.
As a result of globalization, since opportunities of communication between different languages increase, there are increased expectations for realization of the automatic translation apparatus and the example sentence utilization type translation apparatuses as described above and a communication supporting apparatus, which makes use of the speech processing technology, to support communications between persons using different languages as native languages.
However, the automatic translation apparatus as described above is disadvantageous in that it is ordinarily very difficult to obtain an accurate result of translation from the apparatus and all the contents intended by a user are not necessarily transmitted correctly.
Accordingly, since consciousness is intensively concentrated to restrict an input of speech contents to enable the automatic translation apparatus to translate the speech contents to accurate expression of a target language which is as near as possible to the intention of the user, thereby the contents originally intended by the user may not be sufficiently transmitted. Further, the user may forget a supplemental matter that the user originally intends to transmit while the user is concentrated to the manipulation of equipment to transmit a minimum matter.
In contrast, in the example sentence utilization type translation apparatus as disclosed in JP-A No. 2003-30187, the example sentences stored in the apparatus is limited and the number of example sentences that can be presented to a user is limited. Thus, the apparatus has a problem in that an example sentence that sufficiently reflects the contents of a speech which the user desires cannot be found and thus the contents that the user originally intends cannot be sufficiently transmitted or the contents which are originally desired to be transmitted cannot be searched.
Even if any of the automatic translation apparatus and the example sentence utilization type translation apparatus is used, since the user tends to concentrate to the transmission of a minimum matter under the environment of communication in a different language, the user tends to pay no attention to add minute conditions to the contents to be transmitted. Further, there is a case in which speech itself may be neglected due to a cultural background and a lack of knowledge and in which the user does not make necessary speech unless its necessity is pointed out because the user is sure, based on common sense, that the contents of it can be naturally understood without it.